The Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers. In recent years, however, American presidents have anointed themselves with the power to wage war, unilaterally kill Americans, torture prisoners, strip citizens of their rights, arrest and detain citizens indefinitely, carry out warrantless spying on Americans, and erect their own secretive, shadow government.

These are the powers that will be inherited by the next heir to the throne, and it won’t make a difference whether it’s a President Trump or a President Clinton occupying the Oval Office.read on...

Wednesday October 12, 2016

What motivates terrorists to attack the US and US targets overseas? US foreign policy primarily characterized by US bombs fired by drone into countries primarily in the Middle East. This has been Ron Paul's contention for years. Now we see that the FBI agrees. On today's Liberty Report we discuss a recent article about a leaked FBI internal counter-terrorism study and its (not so) surprising conclusions. Will Washington listen to the work of its own agency and work to change its foreign policy?read on...

Tuesday October 11, 2016

There are really two questions here – when is the use of force justified in the context of the key word “abroad” and what have Americans learned regarding overseas interventions from the Iraq experience. As a foreign policy adviser for Ron Paul in 2008 and 2012, I lean in a non-interventionist direction, but that is at least somewhat due to that fact that recent interventions have not worked very well and have in fact increased the number of enemies rather than reduce them while also killing nearly 7,500 American soldiers and more than a million inhabitants of the countries Washington has become entangled with.

One might also reasonably argue based on post 9/11 developments that destabilizing or attacking other countries consistently makes bad situations worse and has a tendency to allow problems to metastasize. This is sometimes referred to as blowback.

Nevertheless, anti-intervention does not necessarily mean anti-war when war becomes the only option to protect vital interests, but armed conflict cannot be entered into lightly. There is in fact a simple answer to when to use force: it is to defend the United States itself against a clearly defined threat to the country or to a genuine vital interest.read on...

Tuesday October 11, 2016

In a leaked 2013 speech by Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, the candidate told the audience that it is necessary to take a public and a private position on each issue. It is an indication of the attitude of the elites, particularly the neocons, that the public cannot be told what their leaders are really up to on any issue. So the question is whether she had a "public" and "private" position on Syria? ISIS? Saudi Arabia? We discuss in today's Liberty Report...read on...

Tuesday October 11, 2016

Folks, this is starting to sound pretty ominous. The Washington War Party is coming unhinged and appears to be leaving no stone unturned when it comes to provoking Putin's Russia and numerous others. The recent collapse of cooperation in Syria----based on the false claim that Assad and his Russian allies are waging genocide in Aleppo---- is only the latest example.

So now comes the US Army's chief of staff, General Mark Milley, doing his best imitation of Curtis LeMay in a recent speech dripping with bellicosity. While America has no industrial state enemy left on the planet that can even remotely challenge its economic might, technological superiority and overwhelming military power, General Milley unloaded a fusillade of bluster at the Association of the United States Army's annual meeting in Washington DC:

The strategic resolve of our nation, the United States, is being challenged and our alliances tested in ways that we haven't faced in many, many decades," Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told the audience.

I want to be clear to those who wish to do us harm … the United States military -- despite all of our challenges, despite our [operational] tempo, despite everything we have been doing -- we will stop you and we will beat you harder than you have ever been beaten before. Make no mistake about that.

That is rank nonsense. We are not being "tested" by anyone. To the contrary, Imperial Washington is provoking tensions and confrontations everywhere -- from the South China Sea to Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, the Black Sea, the Baltics and Ukraine---that have no bearing whatsoever on the safety and security of the citizens of Spokane WA, Topeka KS and Springfield MA.read on...

Monday October 10, 2016

The headline reads “John Kerry calls for war crimes investigation of Russia and Syria over Aleppo attacks”. John Kerry is angry that the Syrian army is about to take eastern Aleppo. He’s angry because the US has no viable force to stop this. He’s angry because Assad is still in power. He’s angry that Assad has allies in Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah. He’s angry that the chemical rap didn’t stick on Assad. He’s angry that the US didn’t launch a massive air attack on Syria’s infrastructure and military in 2013. He’s angry that no viable force of “moderate” rebels exists. He’s taking his anger out on Russia.

Kerry attacks Russia with phony charges because his other options are so unpalatable. He acts as if attacking a city to win a war has suddenly become a war crime, today, in 2016, in Aleppo. He acts as if it was not a crime for Saudi Arabia to attack Yemen, for NATO to attack Libya and for the US to attack Iraq and Afghanistan. He acts as if the moral designation of acts of war has changed drastically from the time that the US mercilessly bombed Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. This was a mere 45 years ago. Does the turning of a calendar page into the 21st century mean that an act of war that was always in mankind’s arsenal of killing suddenly has become a war crime? If so, then the US stands in the docket too.

Kerry is so angry and frustrated that he launches a propaganda salvo to obtain what he cannot win on the battlefield. He attacks Russia and Syria on grounds that apply to Israel, the US and Saudi Arabia in the 21st century. Is this also blindness? Is it also confidence that the American public and media will not call him on this because he’s gotten a free pass up to now? Is it that in the lame duck presidency, he feels free to express his frustration and lash out at convenient objects?read on...

Monday October 10, 2016

Both presidential candidates spoke a good deal about Syria, Russia, Iran, Libya, and foreign policy in general. After they finished the exercise in mutual character assassination, that is. But which is more important, character or issues? And why are the candidates seemingly so ill-informed about basic aspects of the war in Syria? Bad advisors? Propaganda? We take a look at the second debate in today's Liberty Report...read on...

Monday October 10, 2016

There is an attempt underway for a government to take control of our election process and throw the election to Hillary Clinton. It is not the Russian government. Mark this day — it is when we came to understand that the American government decided to elect a president.

Here’s how:

— Two days before the second presidential debate, the government of the United States officially accused Russia of a hacking campaign aimed at interfering in the U.S. election. In a joint statement, absent any specifics or technical details, the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence stated “the recent [hacked email] disclosures… are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts… based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”

— The statement goes on to detail how only Democratic servers were attacked, meaning the American government is claiming that Russia is trying to throw the election to Donald Trump, plain and simple. It is left unsaid why the Russians would risk cyberwar with the United States to do this, as many have suggested Trump is a neocon in spirit whose loose finger will be on the nuclear button from day one. Clinton is much more of a political realist, comfortable with the business-as-usual of the past eight years that has gone in Russia’s favor in the Ukraine and Syria. She in fact seems like the stable known known, always a preference.read on...

Sunday October 9, 2016

Last week marked the fifteenth anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan, the longest war in US history. There weren’t any victory parades or photo-ops with Afghanistan’s post-liberation leaders. That is because the war is ongoing. In fact, 15 years after launching a war against Afghanistan’s Taliban government in retaliation for an attack by Saudi-backed al-Qaeda, the US-backed forces are steadily losing territory back to the Taliban.

What President Obama called “the good war” before took office in 2008, has become the “forgotten war” some eight years later. How many Americans know that we still have nearly 10,000 US troops in Afghanistan? Do any Americans know that the Taliban was never defeated, but now holds more ground in Afghanistan than at any point since 2001? Do they know the Taliban overran the provincial capital of Kunduz last week for a second time in a year and they threaten several other provincial capitals?read on...

Sunday October 9, 2016

With the collapse of the US-Russian ceasefire agreement and the resumption and escalation of the massive Russian bombing campaign in Aleppo, the frustration of hawks in Washington over the failure of the Obama administration to use American military power in Syria has risen to new heights.

But the administration’s inability to do anything about Russian military escalation in Aleppo is the logical result of the role the Obama administration has been playing in Syria over the past five years.

The problem is that the administration has pursued policy objectives that it lacked the means to achieve. When Obama called on President Bashar al-Assad to step down in September 2011, the administration believed, incredibly, that he would do so of his own accord. As former Hillary Clinton aide and Pentagon official Derek Chollet reveals in his new book, The Long Game, “[E]arly in the crisis, most officials believed Assad lacked the necessary cunning and fortitude to stay in power.”

Administration policymakers began using the phrase “managed transition” in regard to US policy toward the government, according to Chollet. The phrase reflected perfectly the vaulting ambitions of policymakers who were eager to participate in a regime change that they saw as a big win for the United States and Israel and a big loss for Iran.read on...